We almost thought we were hallucinating!

After the authority handover at June 28, Ali wrote a post about that event and included a description about Paul Bremer’s farewell speech to the Iraqis. We were surprised that it wasn’t covered by the major media and moreover the Los Angeles times even went as far as saying that Mr. Bremer “ left without even giving a final speech to the country — almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year”.

A day after that Mohammed wrote another post in which he included some of what Bremer said in that speech. Still there was no mention in the media to that speech and some readers started to question- and they have every right to-whether we were not telling the exact truth, as how could it be possible that such a story is not only ignored by all the major media but also some of them reported the opposite in the front page and refused to change their statement!?

However few people like Tim Blair and Roger l. Simon had more trust in us than the major media and linked to our story. Then Patterico took it upon them to focus on this issue and it was also linked by Instapundit and dozens of other websites. Of course we were not the only site that reported this story as others did, but I guess we were the 1st and we had more details about it.

We received dozens of mails asking for the script of that speech and we searched everywhere in the internet to try to find a trace for that speech but all was in vain. We tried to get Bremer’s mail and many readers offered their help but we couldn’t find his address. We were very embarrassed as we failed to provide another story that back up ours.

One of our American readers sent a mail to his local newspaper telling the editor about our story but she said she couldn’t get to our website and she can’t print anything without our permission. I sent a mail giving her the address and the exact link to the posts in question and asked her to publish it, but she didn’t respond!

Finally and after more than a week, the Los Angeles Times corrected their statement about the story. Maybe they received many mails and letters driving their attention to the “mistake” they’ve committed. It could be true that this was an unintended mistake but it would be a very strange one.

It seems that some people in the major media still think they’re the only ones who have eyes and ears and cameras and that ordinary people cannot have access to the information except from the major media outlets. They underestimated the prevalence and the effect of the internet in connecting people to each other and making the readers in direct contact with real eyewitnesses at the scene of events. I hope this will serve to make them more careful in the future on what to report, or make sure that they report from a place in which there are no bloggers. Here is the L. A. Times correction.
Thanks to all the bloggers who helped to reveal the truth this time, and thank God for the Internet.